Economic evaluation is a topic of increasing interest in the health sector. As resource scarcity and opportunity cost, the relevance of economic to decision makers should increase. However, those who fund and support research are becoming more concerned to make it accountable and relevant. Hence the question: does economic evaluation affect health policy or practice? To set the scene, I look first at the growth in the use of economic evaluation, both as individual studies in the published literature and as more system based attempts to incorporate this form of analysis in decision making. I then consider how the question posed above can be answered. The usefulness of economic evaluation to decision-makers should be defined by those decision makers rather than the researchers. And those decision-makers have identified a number of factors, other than efficiency, which are important considerations in their decisions. Consequently to determine the influence of economic evaluation by determining whether specific study recommendations have been implemented will be, at best, narrow and at worst misleading.
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Paper provided by CHERE, University of Technology, Sydney in its series Discussion Papers with number
22.
Find related papers by JEL classification: I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
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